Reports criticise UK Right to Rent checks one year after they were introduced

Foreigners and British citizens without passports, particularly those from ethnic minorities, are being discriminated against in the private rental housing market, a new report has found.

It claims that since landlords and letting agents were required a year ago in England to check that a new tenant has the right to live in the UK under a pilot scheme that is due to go nationwide, there is no evidence that it is working.

A second, separate report suggests that the Government is largely unaware of the impact of the pilot scheme and whether the checks are indeed being done regularly or if some agents and landlords are ignoring it completely.

The checks are part of a wider policy to deter illegal immigrants and landlords and agents who fail to fully comply with the rules face a fine of up to £3,000 or up to five years in jail.

The first report from the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI) found that 51% of landlords surveyed said that the scheme would make them less likely to consider letting to foreign nationals.

It also found that 42% of landlords stated that they were less likely to rent to someone without a British passport as a result of the scheme. This rose to 48% when explicitly asked to consider the impact of the criminal sanction.

An enquiry from a British Black Minority Ethnic tenant without a passport was ignored or turned down by 58% of landlords, in a mystery shopping exercise and the report suggests that the Government is failing to adequately monitor the scheme to measure whether or not it is working as intended, or whether it is causing discrimination.

It also says that it believes that enforcement under the scheme is low and there is no evidence to suggest that the scheme is encouraging irregular migrants to leave the UK and that it creates structural incentives for landlords to discriminate unlawfully against foreigners and ethnic minorities.

One prospective tenant from Brighton, Kirby Costa Campos who is a US citizen married to an European Union national described the process as awful. ‘Two days before we were supposed to move in, we get an email from the rental agency saying we’re not going to release the keys to you, you’ve lost your deposit with us, because you’re not legal in this country. It was awful. I was crying for that entire 24 hour period. I mean, I have a six year old. My child was going to be on the street,’ Campos explained.

Landlords have also hit out at the legislation as being unworkable. ‘How can we, as landlords, ever know really if someone has got the right to rent. Why should we be working as immigration officers when actually we haven’t got a clue and we certainly don’t have any information, or any training,’ said Clare Higson, a member of the Eastern Landlords Association.

‘I feel I have absolutely no way at all of telling whether or not someone has got legitimate immigration papers, how would I recognise a false passport or travel document,’ she added.
The Residential Landlords Association (RLA), said it shares the concerns outlined in the JCWI’s report. ‘The Government’s own figures show the Right to Rent scheme is not working so maybe it is time to scrap it and think again. With the threat of a jail sentence hanging over landlords if they get it wrong it is hardly surprising that they are being cautious,’ said RLA chairman Alan Ward.

‘There are more than 400 acceptable documents proving right to rent from within the EU alone and landlords are making risk-based decisions and only accepting documents that they recognise and have confidence in,’ he added.

Saira Grant, JCWI chief executive believes that landlords are being put in an impossible position. ‘The Right to Rent scheme is failing on all fronts. It treats many groups who need housing unfairly, it is clearly discriminatory, it is putting landlords in an impossible position, and there is no evidence that it is doing anything to tackle irregular immigration,’ she pointed out.

‘Creating a so called hostile environment that targets vulnerable men, women and children is bad enough, implementing a scheme that traps and discriminates against British citizens is absurd. Expanding the scheme to devolved nations without taking into account the discrimination it causes would be misguided and unjustifiable. It is time to stop the scheme before it does any more damage,’ she added.

Meanwhile, according to John Perry, a senior policy adviser at the Chartered Institute of Housing, the Government should rethink the scheme before rolling it out to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as no one know if it is working or not.

‘The Home Office has admitted it cannot monitor the scheme and it’s a fair bet given the limited publicity that at least a proportion of England’s 1.8 million private landlords are still completely unaware of it,’ he said.

He revealed that organisations that the CIH works with, such as housing advice agencies and migrant advisory bodies, say it’s now harder for legal migrants to rent such as refugees and British people can also be affected if they have no passport or other accepted proof of UK residence.

‘It’s time for the Government to seriously reconsider the impact of right to rent on vulnerable tenants and would-be tenants before it is rolled out to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It’s simply not good enough to claim that the scheme has a deterrent effect when the proven benefits are so limited and there are regular reports of the damage being caused,’ said Perry.

Figures from the Home Office show that since the pilot was introduced a year ago some 91 landlords have been issued with civil penalties and fined a total of almost £30,000, with 667 enquiries made to the Home Office’s checking services.

http://www.propertywire.com/news/uk/reports-criticise-uk-right-rent-checks-one-year-introduced/